Kate Casa, a former journalist and an editor of this newspaper in its earliest years, has worked for years in higher education, development, and communications. She has lived in and reported from the Middle East.
BRATTLEBORO-Mainstream media coverage of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is couched in the language of self-defense and regime change. It’s ignoring the fact that Washington is acting as a proxy for Israel’s longstanding agenda targeting Iran.
Israel’s foreign policy is not in America’s national interest — yet here we are again, spending billions on the forever wars that President Donald Trump pledged to end, killing innocent civilians, putting Americans at risk, and neglecting the needs of the American people.
Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has long advocated for military action against Tehran by raising the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. Those calls were parroted in U.S. policy circles and shaped Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal under the first Trump administration.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also pressed hard for “crippling sanctions” that have devastated the Iranian economy, contributed to hyperinflation, and left millions of ordinary Iranians without basic necessities.
When Iranians predictably took to the streets in protest, lethal crackdowns followed, providing Washington and Tel Aviv more fodder for “regime change.”
It’s disingenuous to think those demonstrations were “spontaneous” when U.S. and Israeli policy created the conditions that fueled them.
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Now, abruptly abandoning diplomacy, the United States has launched military strikes that are exactly what Israel has been advocating for decades. Just as the U.S. has been an active partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has slaughtered well over 70,000 people, just as we have supported Israeli land theft and apartheid in the West Bank, now we are complicit in the deaths of Iranian civilians.
And for what?
Washington’s insistent fealty to Israel, its defense of Israel’s inhumanity, has absolutely no benefit to the United States. On the contrary, it harms us.
The cost of this alignment is staggering. Every dollar spent prosecuting endless wars in the Middle East is a dollar not spent helping Americans afford a home, access health care, or put food on the table.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. government has spent approximately $30 billion on military aid to Israel, and Israel and the U.S. are currently negotiating a new two-decade agreement that would commit the U.S. to at least $76 billion in weapons aid.
If you think this somehow supports the U.S. economy, you’re mistaken. According to a Brown University study, military spending produces an average of five jobs per $1 million. The same $1 million investment in education would create nearly 13 jobs, nine in health care, and seven or eight in infrastructure and clean energy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. infrastructure is crumbling, students are crippled with debt, hospitals are closing for lack of funds, and nearly 75% of Americans can’t afford a median-priced home in their own community.
Israel’s agenda is not in the strategic, economic, or moral interests of the United States. We’re locked into this cockeyed relationship thanks to the political influence of Israel and the arms industry, both of which contribute hundreds of millions to the campaign coffers of the politicians responsible for keeping this imbalance going.
This has real consequences for communities across the United States, including here in Vermont. The Vermont National Guard has reportedly been deployed to the Middle East once again, requiring Vermonters to participate in the deaths of Iranian civilians and putting them in harm’s way.
The U.S-Israel relationship benefits Israel alone at the expense of American lives and livelihoods. America’s attacks on Iran and Yemen, our takeover of Venezuelan oil to ensure continued supply if Iran’s oil goes offline, our funding and support for genocide and apartheid, is serving no one but Israel.
Real security comes from robust diplomacy, respect for sovereignty, and a willingness to address the root causes of conflict rather than fueling them. Our toxic relationship with Israel is taking us in the wrong direction. It’s time to end it.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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